Dance venues in North Staffordshire were plentiful at one time, and are recalled today by so many people whose arthritic knees persuade them to pass up the paso doble.

The exhilaration of dancing is well-remembered by anyone who has ever been adept at it.

Arnold Bennett captured this brilliantly in his novel Leonora, which describes a dance at Burslem’s Old Town Hall:

“The floor was thronged by entwined couples who, under the rhythmic domination of the music, glided and revolved in the elaborate pattern of a mazurka.

Mr Mellor and Mrs Haywood at the Whieldon Pottery dinner and dance at the Kings Hall, Stoke, in 1955.

“With their rapt gaze, and their rigid bodies floating smoothly over a hidden mechanism of flying feet, they seemed to be the victims of some enchantment, of which the music was only a mode, and which led them enthralled through endless curves of infallible beauty and grace.

“Form, colour, movement, melody, and the voluptuous galvanism of delicate contacts were all combined in this unique ritual of the dance, this strange convention whose significance emerged from one mystery deeper than the fundamental notes of the bass-fiddle, and lost itself in another more light than the sudden flash of a shirt-front or the tremor of a lock of hair.

Read More

“The goddess reigned. And round about the hall, the guardians of decorum, the enemies of Aphrodite, enchanted too, watched with the simplicity of doves the great Aphrodisian festival, blind to the eternal verities of a satin slipper, a drooping eyelash, a parted lip.”

'One local man who provided music in those days was ‘the Legendary Lonnie’

Bennett describes rather well the sensualism of dancing – which, needless to say, is cranked up to the maximum for the titillation of viewers by the producers of today’s Strictly Come Dancing TV programme.

Locally, even little Silverdale had a dance hall, known as Spooner’s, which, conveniently enough, stood between the Royal Oak pub and the Roxy Cinema and was originally owned by a Mr and Mrs Spooner. It says much about the popularity of dancing that Silverdale folk should be happy to trip the light fantastic in a building that was originally a First World War hut situated at Cannock Chase. It was dismantled by Mr Spooner and his two sons, Harold and Joseph and conveyed to Silverdale by lorry.

There were problems during the war when American troops, many of whom were based at Keele, would head to Spooner’s clutching money, cigarettes and chewing gum.

Read More

They proved a big hit with the girls, much to the disenchantment of the local chaps, and fights broke out.

The King’s Hall in Stoke hosted evenings of popular music, with Saturday night dances in the late 1950s particularly remembered.

One local man who provided music in those days was ‘the Legendary Lonnie’ whose rock and roll/rhythm and blues band would appear.

He told The Sentinel in 1992 that he often wondered how people heard the band. They did not have powerful PA equipment and there were often more than 3,000 people in the audience. At 10 pm, there were sometimes people still queuing outside.

Weekend Sentinel columnist Mervyn Edwards

The Queen’s in Burslem is also remembered for dancing – and for social rituals. When I interviewed the late Bernard Frain about the Queen’s, he told me that in the late 1940s and 1950s, he and his friends would meet at the Foaming Quart in Greenhead Street on Saturday nights.

One of the gang would go to the Queen’s to buy tickets, and they would ask for a ‘pass out’.

This meant that they had to be at the Queen’s for 9.50 pm, or else they couldn’t get in – especially as there was a policeman on the door, as well as a door-keeper.